Longing and Fulfillment

Luke 4:14-21 

Lord Jesus, who fulfills our deepest desires and longings when we don't even know how to express them, open our hearts to hear your good news this day, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Amen. 

"Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

The Israelites had been waiting for many years. In Egypt, they yearned for freedom, In the desert, they yearned to find a new home, When they were settled, they wanted a king, and when their kingdom was overthrown, they wanted to be released from exile. Throughout all that time, they wanted a messiah, an anointed one. Those who were living by the commandments of Moses knew that as much as they tried to keep all the commandments, they couldn't. They kept having to be cleansed and restart. We get distracted so easily. We forget so easily. We are fallen and sinful creatures despite not wanting to be. And so the Israelites longed for a Messiah, someone to save them. To put them in alignment with God, to make them at one with God.

In walks Jesus walks into the synagogue he has been to many times before in his hometown of Nazareth and offers to read. This is the synagogue in Jesus' hometown. The synagogue where Jesus probably first read the Torah. The synagogue community in which he grew and learned and played and fought and patiently waited to be an adult, patiently waved off efforts to marry him off to good Jewish girls, participating in the life and business and community of Nazareth. And on this sabbath day in the synagogue, Jesus gets up to share in the worship of God and the readings and chooses these verses to read. He picks a passage from the 61st chapter of Isaiah, known as the part of Isaiah where he proclaims the Good News of deliverance.

As Luke tells the story, this is when Jesus so simply tells the people that the deep seated longing that they have had for generations and generations has finally been fulfilled. And so they go forth saying great things about him, and rightfully so!

But what about us? We have longings and desires. Perhaps I should speak for myself, but I assume that all of you in this room also have desires and holes in your lives. Most of us do not lack basic essentials, food, or water, but perhaps we want more sleep, more time with our loved ones all the way through to more material or complex desires, wanting our loved ones to be happy, a new car, to serve others, or to be cured of disease or cancer. Unfortunately in the society we live in, we think of most of these things in market terms, wanting our desires to be able to be filled quickly and easily with the right amount of money. There are plenty of fulfillment companies out there, and it would be great if along with our Amazon purchases, they could fulfill our spiritual and emotional desires with as much ease of purchase and perhaps free shipping.

Unfortunately many of us have learned and continue to learn time and time again, when it comes to some of the deeper spiritual and emotional desires in our lives, we are very often disappointed when we depend on other people. When we expect other people to fill those holes in our lives which we have a hard time naming and facing, we create impossible expectations that no one can ever fill. These longings often times can be named as wanting to always know you are loved and accepted for who you are.

One of the theologian philosophers I studied in college struggled with the human longings we all feel, but particularly the longing that we can never fill. Blaise Pascal wrote, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” (Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425))

Pascal was speaking of the human condition of longing that most of us feel to know ourselves part of something greater, part of something that has meaning in this world. He concluded after much deliberation that this was part of the way that we human beings knew God. And this quote was the start of the phrase, "God-shaped hole." Basically, Pascal said, Don't bother looking anywhere else. God is the only one who can fulfill all your deepest longings.

And what did Jesus say in the gospel passage this morning? “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” We have no idea what else he said that day in the synagogue, but Luke says everyone spoke highly of him. And while Luke has this story in what seems like a funny place since Jesus hasn't actually done any of those things yet, we know that he will. We know the later stories of the blind man who was able to see and the poor multitudes that were fed and walked away with extra on the hillside of Galilee. And beyond the stories written in the gospel books, are the myriad of stories throughout the centuries that form the living gospel story, because each Christian that has ever gone before us was in some way blind or poor, held captive or oppressed and was given the good news by Jesus and found new life with God.

Each of us is in some way part of Jesus' mission to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to give sight to the blind, or to let the oppressed go free, because in some way each of us is poor, held captive, blind, or oppressed by the evil forces of this world. We can be spiritually or emotionally poor, blind to the sufferings of others, held captive by fear or worry or anxiety and oppressed by the socially enforced ideas that keep us from being fully ourselves. Jesus has come into this world to proclaim the good news of our release and beloved status to each and every one of us.

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing because Jesus is here speaking to each and every one of you in this room. You have been set free. You have been given new sight. You are loved. What you have been longing for and trying to fill with other things in this world can be named and fulfilled only with Jesus. Let us open our hearts and minds and eyes with new sight, for the Lord is doing marvelous works in each and every one of us. 

Amen. 

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